Magento VS Shopify: Find Your Best E-Commerce Platform

By Kate Punova

11+

Reading Time: 4minutes

Choosing the right e-commerce platform is an important task for online stores. To succeed on the World Wide Web, a company needs a specific website with the ability to combine physical and digital purchases. Magento and Shopify belong to the most famous e-commerce platforms. Both are great, but it’s better to study them carefully to find all the peculiarities.
Shopify is a hosted solution which can be set up in a few minutes. A merchant doesn’t have to worry about code and domain, because Shopify delivers world-leading security already in a place. At the same time, Magento needs individual hosting, download, installation, and set-up. A company owner has to take a responsibility for security and hosting because there is the risk of hacks and downtimes.PricingShopify can impress a businessman with the next plans.

Lite Plan. For $9 per month, a user gets an opportunity to sell on Facebook, chat with customers, add items, and accept credit card payments.

Basic Plan. For $29 per months, a businessman has an access to the discount code engine, an ability to add unlimited products, to have 24-hour support, to start a blog, to have free SSL certificate and 2 staff accounts.

Shopify Plan. For $79 per month, it will be possible to use such features, as high-level reports, gift cards, 5 accounts for staff and abandoned cart recovery.

Advanced Plan. For $299 per month, a user gets a special report builder, 15 staff accounts and ability to monitor the shipping carrier rates in real time.

Magento services are free but don’t forget that it is open-source and complex software, which needs expensive hosting. For merchants with no technical experience, it’s better to hire a developer, whose services can be rather expensive. The Enterprise Edition for the original Magento plan starts with $18,000 for the year. It includes custom content, responsive design, quick checkout, bonuses, a serious support system.Design
Shopify has more than 60 available themes, 10 of which are cost-free. The price of the premium themes varies from $140 to $180. A WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor gives an opportunity to upload new content on the site without problems. Shopify will be the best choice for a businessman-beginners, who are not good at programming. For advanced users, Magento is comprehensible and convenient. Magento doesn’t have its own themes but offers templates from a third-party (some cost up to $500). In its backend is hard to work, especially, if a seller doesn’t know about HTML or CSS.Apps and Integration
The Shopify App Store was expanded by the great amount of free add-ons. Today it is easy to download extensions for marketing, shipping, SEO and other goals. All of them can be integrated without coding skills. Magento also provides a wide range of apps, but they are like templates. A merchant has to upload it, integrate it, customize it, and almost always code it.Ease Of Use
As we explored before, Magento systemhas a very complex structure and it may become a real headache when it comes to the organizational process, so it’s better to ask for help specialists. But after starting an intense work, the daily use will become smooth. The admin dashboard is well-organized and it is easy to perform all the operations. After registration, a Getting Started guide appeared which describes how to add products, choose a theme, and configure parameters etc. Shopify offers special tools to the user, so the merchant has an opportunity to insert descriptions and details, control stocktaking, create web pages, design discount code, track customers. All of them will be comprehensible for everyone.Features

Magento

Shopify

Coupons

It allows discount code creation

It doesn’t include this feature in a Lite Plan but offer it in others

Language Capabilities

It includes a multi-lingual support

It doesn’t support the accesses to the languages directly. The user has to download the relevant app

SEO Tools

It presents a friendly URLs, meta-information, and a Google Site Map

It allows to optimize the site with the help of configurable heading, meta tags, and a self-executing generated sitemap.xml

Blogging functionality

It can be downloaded as a free plug-in

It is an integrated feature

Payment gateways

There is a small number of gateways, but they can be added thanks to the third-party add-ons

Customer Service & Technical SupportThe technical service is not offered by Magento. If a merchant wants a personalized help in solving problems, he needs to find a specialist on forums. If a person really wants to get a desirable result, it is advisable to look not only for a technically-informed expert, but for a tester. Such a professional will be able to make a merchant’s life much more easier (by finding bugs). Testing helps to improve the product’s quality and thereby improve the level of customer service. Shopify has a round-the-clock support through the all popular channels of communication (mail, online-chat, telephone).Negative and Positive Reviews

Magento

Negative reviews

Many Magento users talk about learning problems. It’s hard for them to work with the platform because there is no support, onboarding assistance and merchants have to look for software updates personally.

Positive reviews

The ability to perform deep customizations is really great. It’s easy to find a helper on the specialized forum. Sellers like Magento’s broad features and the absence of a work disruption.

Shopify

Negative reviews

Shopify clients mentioned about dissatisfaction with Shopify Payments. Many installments were hold and canceled. Transaction fees are too high and users dislike how their monthly bills run up.

Positive reviews

Sellers like the absence of limits on the product list, 24/7 support, huge amount of free themes and add-ons. The platform is easy to use.

These two e-commerce platforms have their own positive and negative characteristics, so the businessman’s main task is to compare them, set priorities and make a right choice. Shopify is better for the beginners, who prefer clarity and easiness. Magento can become a base for a fundamental web-commerce with complex technical groundwork, which can be more customized.

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